The Aliwal Shoal

I was beginning to feel deprived of diving, so after a very long drive north from The Wild Coast, we arrived at uMkmoaas. This small town, around 40km south of Durban, is where the dive boats launch for the Aliwal Shoal. Often quoted as being one of the top 10 dive sites in the world, it is known for the abundance of sharks, in particular “raggies” (ragged-tooth sharks).
















We set of early in the morning with Aliwal Diving Centre. The launch here is a slightly hair raising affair – they use small inflatable boats which speed out from the river across the surf with the divers hanging for dear life. Getting back in is equally fun as they head the boat straight at the beach and go as fast as possible to avoid having to drag it up too far.
















The cage diving near Cape Town was freezing, so we were somewhat concerned this would be an unpleasantly cold dive. However, as this is now the Indian Ocean, and we were wrapped up well in 5ml wetsuits, it was actually fine. The visibility was reasonably good, but the currents were strong and unpredictable, buffeting us around quite a lot and making the going pretty tiring. We did two dives, and whilst not the most exciting we have done recently, we did three see three raggies, a bull ray and several stone fish. The reef is also an interesting landscape, covering quite a large area, meaning that it doesn't matter if you drift around with the current, there is always something interesting to see.
















After our day's diving, we drove up to Durban for a two night stay to allow ourselves to get organised for the next stage of the trip. Despite all the horror stories the locals had told us in Cape Town and on the way up, about how unsafe Durban is, we felt pretty comfortable, albeit we used cabs to get around and didn't leave the security gated and electric wired hostel. The motto of our hostel, Tekweni Backpackers, was “Tekweni goes off”, so the second night we felt obliged to join the staff in an excess drinking session. Other than that, we spent much of our time trying to book a 4x4 hire car to take to Lesotho, and touring the city's malls. The latter activity was focused on buying sleeping bags, and other equipment, that we need for our overland tour from Jo'burg, and for Richard's proposed Kilimanjaro climb. We were duly conned into spending far too much money in the kit- tastic Cape Union Mart (probably equivalent to the UK's Blacks). All the gear and no idea...
















Having had our fill of shopping malls, we were picked up the next day at 9:30am to get our 4x4 hire car. However, we didn't manage to leave Durban until about 6pm, and in the dark... a whole story in itself which I will leave until the next entry.